Q: Who was the 3rd most valuable position player on the Giants last season by wins above replacement?
A: Andres Torres
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Torres was a weird bird for the 2009 Giants. He was a 31-year-old minor league journeyman with a scant 285 career plate appearances in the majors before the season started. Originally drafted by the Tigers in [...]
Posts Tagged ‘defense’
Andres Torres And Flyballs
Friday Graph: Defense And Pitching
Run prevention is a hugely important team skill in baseball. Baseball highlights will often be composed of those who can hit the longest home runs, but having a top defensive team can do wonders for a team’s record. For example, take the Giants. Collectively as a team the Giants can’t hit their way out of [...]
Giants Preseason Blogger Q&A
This is something I’ve wanted to do for awhile. Round up some of my favorite Giants bloggers and discuss a few questions that I think will be important to the team this season. The Giants are still in a period of transition and this season should be exciting on a few different levels. Each blogger [...]
Graphing Rowand
I’ve been playing around lately with some graphs depicting what a player contributes — offense, defense, and both combined with a positional adjustment — versus the theoretical replacement level. It’s a pretty quick way to see the peaks and valley’s of a players last few years. Aaron Rowand might want to forget his first season [...]
Wondering About Wiggy
This past week the Houston Astros decided to non-tender Ty Wigginton rather than extend a contract to him and increase his salary through arbitration. The Chron article that I just linked to suggests that after arbitration, Wigginton would have been looking at a salary around $6M. He made $4.35M last year. Because the Astros did [...]
Ultimate Zone Rating
Exciting news this weekend, FanGraphs is now providing UZR data — Ultimate Zone Rating — on it’s website. UZR for those who don’t know, is one of the more heralded defensive systems out there. Consider UZR another handy tool to stick in your tool belt when it comes to player analysis. UZR splits the field [...]
Aaron Rowand is a GAMER.
From big daddy Baggs:
I don’t recall exactly when it happened, but a Giants hitter fouled a ball into the dugout in the early part of the game. It took a bounce off the concrete and hit Rowand between his temple and his left eye.
“I was stretching and was turned to the side, so I never [...]
Friday Morning Link Jumble
The Giants will be kicking off their series against the dreaded blue ones tonight at Mays Field in a 3-game series. The pitching match-ups for the games are as follows:
Friday August 8th – RHP Brad Penny (5-9, 5.88 ERA, 4.66 FIP) vs. LHP Barry Zito (6-13, 5.40 ERA, 4.89 FIP)
Saturday August 9th – RHP Hiroki [...]
Wondering About Correia
Thoughts after last night’s 6-4 win over the Washington Nationals
~ Washington might have one of the ugliest lineups in the National League. If you thought the Giants were punchless, have you seen the Nats? Injuries have decimated Washington, transforming their lineup into a graveyard of bad hitters. Willie Harris, Paul Lo Duca, and Ryan Langerhans [...]